course of five generations, by constantly intermarrying with bad stocks, produced 709 known descendants who were on the whole unfit for society, and have been a constant danger and burden to society.36 A still larger family of the same kind, more recently studied in Germany, consisted of 834 known persons, all descended from a drunken vagabond woman, probably somewhat feeble-minded but physically vigorous. The great majority of these descendants were prostitutes, tramps, paupers, and criminals (some of them murderers), and the direct cost in money to the Prussian State for the keep and care of this woman and her family has been a quarter of a million pounds. Yet another such family is that of the "Zeros." Three centuries ago they were highly respectable people, living in a Swiss valley. But they intermarried with an insane stock, and subsequently married other women of an unbalanced nature. In recent times 310 members of this family have been studied, and it is found that vagrancy, feeble-mindedness, mental troubles, criminality, pauperism, immorality are, as it may be termed, their patrimony.37
These classes, with their tendency to weak-mindedness, their inborn laziness, lack of vitality, and unfitness for organized activity, contain the people who complain that they are starving for want of work, though they will never perform any work that is given them. Feeble-mindedness is an absolute dead-weight on the race. It is an evil that is unmitigated. The heavy and complicated social burdens and injuries it inflicts on the present generation are without compensation, while the unquestionable fact that in any degree it is highly inheritable renders it a deteriorating poison to the race; it depreciates the quality of a people. The task of Social Hygiene which lies before us cannot be attempted by this feeble folk. Not only can they not share it, but they